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Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell delivers a keynote at the Moscone Center in San Francisco in 2011. Dell faces competition from other investors in his effort to take over the computer maker he founded in 1984.
ROUND ROCK, Texas -- Dell said Monday that a special board committee plans to negotiate with Blackstone Group and activist investor Carl Icahn over new acquisition bids for the computer maker that rival an offer of more than $24 billion from an investor group that includes founder Michael Dell.

The company said the committee has determined that the bids from buyout specialist Blackstone and Icahn could be superior to a proposal from CEO Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners to buy the company for $13.65 a share.

Blackstone proposed buying the company in a deal that would equate to more than $14.25 a share. Icahn wants to buy up to 58 percent of Dell's shares for $15 each.

The company said Michael Dell, who founded the company, is willing to work with third parties on alternate acquisition proposals.

Dell Inc. (DELL) shares climbed 3.3 percent, or 47 cents, to $14.60 about 70 minutes before markets open on Monday.

Silver Lake Partners raised its bid six times by about $4 billion over the course of negotiations, and the committee still recommends that bid while it evaluates the other offers, according to a statement from the company. But Icahn and other investors have criticized that bid as too low.

Southeastern Asset Management, Dell's second-largest shareholder after Michael Dell, has asserted the company is worth closer to $24 a share.

The offer from Michael Dell and Silver Lake was announced in early February. Dell's board then set a 45-day period to allow for offers that might top that bid. That period expired Friday.

Many investors expected that a higher bid was in the works for the world's third-largest PC maker. Several buyout scenarios tying Blackstone to Dell were leaked to the media last week.

Dell and other PC makers are struggling as technology spending shifts to smartphones and tablet computers. Dell and HP, the top PC maker, are trying to adapt by making more tablets and diversifying into more profitable areas of technology, such as business software, data analytics and storage.

Michael Dell believes he will be in a better position to overhaul the company if he no longer has to worry about Wall Street's focus on profit fluctuations from one quarter to the next.

Shares of Dell had climbed nearly 40 percent so far in 2013, as of Friday's market close. That includes a rise of nearly 7 percent since the shares closed at $13.27 on Feb. 4, the day before the Dell-Silver Lake bid was announced.

It is nearly impossible to understand how Chesapeake CEO and co-founder Aubrey McClendon has kept his job. In April, an investigation found that he had borrowed $1.1 billion against personal interests he had in oil and gas wells held by his firm. Most analysts viewed this as a serious conflict of interest. The Securities and Exchange Commission started an "informal inquiry" into the matter shortly thereafter. In May, his board forced him out as chairman, and in June, McClendon hired an ex-SEC lawyer to represent his interests.

As if all this wasn't enough to trigger his dismissal from the CEO post, revenue in the most recently reported quarter dropped to $3 billion from $4 billion in the same period a year ago. Even more telling, Chesapeake suffered a loss of $2 billion, compared to a $922 million profit a year earlier.

The board of this oil and natural gas giant was shaken up in June with the arrival of a new chairman and four new members. Odds are, McClendon has run out of time.

Groupon's falling share price and weak operating results are keeping the pressure on Mason, and there are already rumors that the board may replace the man who has been the CEO since he co-founded the company in 2008.

His fate could rest in the hands of a very small group of people. Eric P. Lefkofsky, Groupon's executive chairman and another co-founder, owns shares that represent 27.7% of the voting power of the board. Accel Partners and New Enterprise Associates also hold a substantial number of voting shares, and could swing a vote against Mason.

One of the criticisms of Mason is that he has allowed both smaller companies and larger ones such as Amazon (AMZN) and Walmart (WMT), to siphon off so much market share from Groupon. In part because of Mason's failures to defend the business from competition, Groupon's financial results have been horrible, causing concerns it will not survive as an independent company. In the most recent quarter, revenue rose to $569 million from $430 million. That growth rate of 32% is below what would be expected of a dominant Web 2.0 company. Despite top line growth, Groupon lost $54 million in 2011. The revenue improvement for the latest quarter was a slowdown from the overall 52% rate for the first three-quarters of the year.

Read joined the troubled chip company in April 2011 with the idea that he could engineer a badly needed turnaround. AMD shares have plunged 72% since then, and there is virtually no case to be made that his tenure has not done more to harm than good to the company.

At the end of the third quarter of 2012, AMD's share of the microprocessor market worldwide was less than 17%. Intel (INTC) had nearly the entire balance of the market and was gaining ground.

One major factor in AMD's decline is entirely beyond its control: The PC market to which its fortunes are so intimately linked has been on a long decline, with shipments falling 8% in the third quarter alone, according to industry research firm Gartner. Where AMD has some measure of control over its fate is in its diversification beyond PCs into the fast-growing tablet and smartphone markets, currently dominated by Qualcomm (QCOM) and Samsung. Intel has begun to gain sales in those markets with its Atom x86 chip. AMD, on the other hand, under Read, has made no headway in this important sector.

Riccitiello joined EA as CEO in April 2007, and the game company's fortunes have run very much downhill since then. EA shares are off more than 75% in the past five years, and it had a combined net loss of almost $2.5 billion over fiscal years 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

During the most recently reported quarter, revenue fell from $715 million to $711 million. EA's net loss was $381 million compared to a loss of $340 million in the same quarter a year earlier. Wall Street was further disappointed by the company's outlook for the next quarter.

The case against Riccitiello is easy to make. He has been unable to move a significant share of the company's revenue to new social media and mobile platforms -- where the action in the gaming business is . In July, 2011, EA bought PopCap Games for $650 million plus earn outs to move further into the social game and smartphone sectors. It bought Playfish in November 2009, paying as much as $400 million, to reach the Facebook online game sector. But EA continues to be flanked by companies such as Zynga Inc. (ZNGA), and its revenue does not show that it has made much progress with its diversification efforts beyond legacy platforms like game consoles.

McCoy joined Avon Products as CEO on April 12. Avon's share price is down 38% since then, a remarkably poor record. McCoy was brought in to turn around a company almost ruined by her predecessor, Andrea Jung. In the third quarter, revenue dropped 8% to $2.6 billion. Net income dropped 81% to $32 million. Results for the first three-quarters of the year were not any better. If strong leadership is highlighted by the ability to articulate the plans that will make the company successful in the future, McCoy has failed. Among the comments in the most recent quarterly report was: "Management has the team fully aligned around actions that will accelerate top-line growth, reduce costs and improve working capital." Shortly after Avon released its quarterly results, it announced it would cut 1,500 jobs and close its South Korea and Vietnam operations. This was part of a program to save $400 million annually. McCoy explained these moves "begin the process of returning Avon to sustainable growth." She did not explain how cutting costs brings about better sales.

It is usually hard to fire a founder who is also the CEO of the company he started. Michael Dell may be the most powerful case for breaking this precedent. Dell's shares are not only down 30% this year, but they have fallen 59% over the past five years. For the most recent quarter, revenue fell from $15.4 billion to $13.7 billion. Net income fell to $475 million from $893 million in the same quarter a year ago. For the first nine months of the fiscal year, results were equally disappointing. The most damning evidence against Michael Dell is that he has been much too slow to diversify his company into either the enterprise markets, which are controlled by such companies as International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Oracle Corp. (ORCL), or into the smart device business, as Apple and Google Inc. (GOOG) have. M&A activity has included deals such as the recent one to buy Gale Technologies. The company is not large enough to give Dell critical mass in the enterprise, consulting, software and services business, which drives the strong results at industry leader IBM.

Gardner became Windstream CEO in late 2005. One of Gardner's great accomplishments as head of Windstream, according to the company, is that he "has completed nine acquisitions since its 2006 spinoff from Alltel Corp." Windstream's stock performance has been weak so far this year, as well as over the longer term of five years. Wall St. has shied from the Windstream shares because, although revenue has risen because of M&A, the bottom line has not. Revenue has gone from $3 billion in 2006 to $4.3 billion in the most recent fiscal year. Net income has dropped from $545 million in 2006 to $172 million in the most recent fiscal year. Matters have gotten even worse recently. In the most recently reported quarter, pro forma revenue was $1.55 billion, a drop of about 1% from the same period a year ago. Net income on the same basis was $54 million, down from of $78 million a year ago. Where has Gardner failed shareholders? He has diversified into very weak businesses, particularly in the disappearing landline sector. Gardner's efforts in high-speed Internet and competition from alternate broadband offerings continues to damage Windstream.

Johnson became CEO of J.C. Penney in November 2011. In a little over a year, he has crippled what was already a vulnerable retailer. Johnson, the former retail chief at Apple Inc. (AAPL), serves at the pleasure of William Ackman of Pershing Square, which owned, as of the last proxy, 18% of J.C. Penney. Vornado Realty Trust also owns nearly 11%, which means the two groups together control much of the sentiment of the board. Ackman will get tired of losing money, or perhaps the holders of Pershing fund will. It is amazing Ackman has stayed with Johnson as long as he has, given J.C. Penney's performance. In the most recently reported quarter, revenue fell from $4 billion to $2.9 billion. J.C. Penney posted a loss of $123 million. The figures for the first three-quarters of the year were just as bad. Revenue fell from $11.8 billion in the same nine months a year ago period to $9.1 billion. The loss for the nine months was $433 million. Johnson will not make it through 2013. The question is whether J.C. Penney will, or will the board need to sell the retailer off in pieces.